


Alien Eyes

by LiterallyThePresident



Series: Connection [1]
Category: Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Genre: Ace is Appalled, Dives into my own headcanons for vestals, Humans Are Weird, at least Ace thinks so, because ‘aliens are just like humans but with weird eyes’ is so boring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21713242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyThePresident/pseuds/LiterallyThePresident
Summary: Ace thinks human eyes are weird. Shun thinks vestal eyes are weird. Somehow it evolves into a conversation about sleep
Relationships: Ace Grit & Kazami Shun (Bakugan Battle Brawlers)
Series: Connection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566988
Comments: 8
Kudos: 91
Collections: Humans Are Space Orcs





	Alien Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> So I loved New Vestroia and I think it had a lot of potential that was wasted

Ace hadn’t liked the humans at first. In fact, he’d hated them. It was the eyes, initially. Their creepy eyes, ragged and cratered and far too deep for comfort. It was unnatural, eyes like that. Eyes like deep pockmarked pools, pupils like black holes, taking everything in and letting nothing escape. And they didn’t have the decency to only have one kind of creepy, either. Their eyes were scary in different ways. 

Marucho’s eyes were deeper than the ocean, and the first few times Ace made the mistake of looking directly into them, he’d nearly fallen over where he stood. Dan’s eyes were dark and had the color and visual texture of smoldering firewood, fitting for the fire that burned within him, but unnerving to look at for more than a few moments. But Shun’s eyes were the most nerve-wracking of all, at least to Ace. They were cool and focused, burning yet icy all at once, accepting no excuses. His eyes seemed to demand Ace look at them, demand he meet his gaze so they could reach in and see all his innermost thoughts and feelings with amber efficiency.

Shun’s eyes had been the ones that frightened Baron at first, even after meeting the other humans. Shun’s eyes had spooked the kid enough that he’d scooted closer to Mira as if for protection. It had not endeared Ace to him at all. Even now that he considered them friends, he still felt a pang of discomfort when he looked into their eyes. 

“Can I ask a weird question?” Ace asked as the suns began to set, and Shun glanced up from his work.

“Go ahead.” he said easily, and Ace made an effort to look him in the eyes. 

“What’s with the creepy eyes?”

“...What?” Shun deadpanned, but Ace continued.

“Your eyes. They’re strange. Not just you, I mean like humans in general. And it’s not just me, I think you’ve noticed that vestals tend to react adversely to your eyes.” He remembered Marucho’s first battle with Ace at his side, the way even Mylene Farrow had taken a step back when Marucho looked at her directly. The way the ever-cocky Lync Volan had been visibly unsettled in his first encounter with Shun.

“I do.” Shun nodded, “I simply assumed it was because they could tell we weren’t like them.”

“Yeah.” Ace said, “And because your eyes are seriously creepy.”

“ _ Our _ eyes are creepy?” Shun laughed softly, and Ace was at least relieved he didn’t seem offended, “Vestal eyes reflect light, now  _ that’s _ creepy.”

“Yours...  _ don’t _ ?” Ace grit out, hoping to all the stars above that Shun was just messing with him, like Baron convincing Dan that vestals ate rocks. In response, Shun stood up to flick the lights off, and in the darkness Ace pulled out his flashlight function without needing instructions. He pointed it at Shun with a slight swallow, nervous. Sure enough, the light just seemed to get pulled into Shun’s eyes, not a single speck of light reflecting back. Shun stared at him in the circle of light, looking vaguely amused. Disconcerted, Ace flicked the flashlight off, and Shun was swallowed by the darkness. 

If Ace didn’t have his superior vestal night vision, he’d never even know anyone was there.

Shun flipped the lights back on and returned to his seat, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Satisfied?”

“You people are so weird.” Ace huffed, and Shun gave a soft laugh. 

“Some animals on Earth have reflective eyes.” he appeased him, “We call it tapetum lucidum, and it’s common among smaller animals like cats and raccoons.”

“But not you.” Ace sighed. 

“But not us.” Shun shook his head, “If it helps, Dan didn’t know your eyes did that until he ran into Baron in the kitchen one night. Ask him about it sometime. He screamed so loud I thought we were under attack.” Ace laughed at that, and Shun seemed pleased that he’d made him laugh. 

“If it’s all the same to you, I still think your eyes are creepy.” he said, and Shun shrugged.

“And I think yours are.” Ace raised a disbelieving eyebrow at that.

“What could possibly be scary about our eyes?” he asked incredulously. Shun tilted his head slightly, eyes drifting a little to the left as he seemed to choose his words carefully. 

“To me,” Shun started cautiously, “your eyes seem dull. I guess a better word would be glassy. Kinda... dead? They look empty and glazed over, and it’s a bit nerve-wracking until you get used to it. It’s almost like looking into a doll’s eyes.” Ace scoffed a little, but... it made sense, he supposed. If he thought about it from an alien point of view.

“I guess I can see that.” he admitted, “So we’re both creeped out by each other’s eyes.” Shun let out a small chuckle, leaning back.

“So it seems.” he agreed, “Can I ask a question of my own?”

“Sure.”

“When Dan said that vestals don’t sleep, was he for real?” he asked, “I can never tell when he’s messing around.”

“Sleep?” Ace cocked his head, “That weird... unconsciousness thing you guys do at night?”

“Yeah.”

“Where you like... shut down? Like androids?” he shuddered a little, remembering the first time he’d walked into the living area to find Dan unresponsive on the couch. They’d frantically woken him, much to his annoyance, but they’d never gotten a full explanation beyond ‘humans need sleep, leave me alone’. Or at least, Ace hadn’t. Mira no longer seemed concerned when the humans shut down every night, so it was likely someone explained it to her, and Baron was far too curious to have not bombarded them with questions about it.

That left Ace out of the loop, a place he hated being.

“That’s the one.” Shun said with a sigh, “So I’m guessing it’s true?”

“Yeah...” Ace said, “So what is it? A ritual? A weird human biological function?”

“If I may ask, how do vestals recharge?” Shun asked rather than answering him, and Ace blinked at him. 

“Recharge?”

“Yeah, like how do you renew yourself? Refresh your mind? Rest so your body can revitalize?”

“Oh!” Ace exclaimed, “Oh, that. Yeah, we get our energy from the sun. Or any star, really. Our skin absorbs solar radiation and light, and it converts it to energy.”

“And that allows you to always be awake.” Shun mused, seeming pleased to understand, “That must come in handy.”

“Unless we’re trapped somewhere without sunlight.” Ace shrugged, and Shun gave a little smirk.

“You’re like plants.” and Ace huffed.

“That’s rude.” he said, “We are not plants.”

“Is that why your hair colors are so bright?” Shun grinned, “Photosynthesis?”

“Anyway.” Ace glared, “Sleep. Explain it to me.” Shun let it go with a soft laugh, though he did murmur a quiet apology that Ace waved away dismissively.

“Sleep is...” Shun thought for a moment, “A strange thing to try and explain.”

“How so?” Ace asked curiously.

“It’s one of those things that you never really think about.” he explained, “Everyone sleeps, so why should you need to explain it? It would be like me asking you why your eyes are the way they are. The reason is unclear, they just... are.”

“Can’t you try?” he asked impatiently, and Shun sighed.

“Of course I’m going to try.” Shun said, “Sleep is something that humans need to do every night. It’s essentially our bodies entering a period of inactivity to restore itself and the mind.”

“So you fall unconscious in order to revitalize?” Ace asked, and Shun thought for a moment.

“Kind of.” he said, “Our bodies are inactive, but our minds aren’t.”

“So you’re aware of your surroundings but can’t move?” Ace asked, “That sounds unpleasant.”

“No.” Shun chuckled, “No, we aren’t aware. We’re usually dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” Ace blinked, “What’s that?”

“Dreams are… hm. How do I put it?” Shun pondered, “It’s sort of like hallucinating, I guess. The brain creates simulated scenarios in order to process the events of the day, or the events of the past, or just whatever’s weighing on you.” Ace wasn’t sure he entirely understood, but he gave it his best effort.

“So… you’re body is inactive, but your mind is in a simulation of its own creation?” Shun smiled at him, weird eyes shining.

“Exactly.” he nodded, and Ace frowned.

“What do you dream about?”

“Depends on the person.” Shun shrugged, “And it tends to be different every night. And dreams are really hard to remember unless they were particularly intense or vivid.”

“Hard to remember?” Ace asked, alarmed, “So your mind makes up simulations but then makes you forget them?”

“That about sums it up.” Shun nodded, “Sometimes you forget them immediately upon waking, and sometimes the memory just kinda slips through your fingers like sand throughout the day.”

“So how do you know if you dreamed something important?” he demanded.

“A dream is entirely the creation of your own mind.” Shun placated, “And either way, it’s not like you forget every one. Sometimes dreams stick with you.”

“Can you tell me about one?” Ace asked, and then a thought occurred to him, “If that’s okay, I don’t know the culture surrounding dreams, is it like a private thing?”

“Not at all.” Shun gave him a reassuring smile, “Let’s see… when I was around twelve, I had a dream that I was on a boat with my parents and some kids from school whose faces I couldn’t really make out. We were approaching a waterfall, but I wasn’t afraid. Then I was in space, and I could fly, and I flew into a galaxy and it felt like a warm bath. There were some whales and giant butterflies flying around with me. It was a nice dream.”

“Can humans survive in space?” Ace asked with interest.

“Nope.”

“Ah.”

“But dreams rarely make sense. The fun thing about dreams is that in a dream, everything seems normal, nothing seems strange or out of place. It’s only when you wake up and think that you realize something was weird.”

“So… like, you can dream that you’re breathing underwater or something, and you won’t think to wonder why?” 

“Exactly.” Shun nodded with approval, “Or you can dream that there’s a giant planet in the sky above you, and also you’re in love with Gus Grav, and you’ll just go ‘yep, this is normal, nothing strange here’.”

“But then you wake up and go ‘what in the name of the stars was that’?” Ace guessed, laughing a little at the thought, and Shun laughed with him.

“Yes.”

“Dreaming sounds… kinda nice.” Ace admitted, and Shun hesitated a little.

“It is. Usually.” he said slowly, “But… not always.”

“Not always?”

“For example, just last night I had a nightmare.” he offered, and Ace blinked.

“A what?”

“A scary dream.” he clarified, “A dream that upsets you or frightens you.”

“... Oh, of  _ course _ you can have scary dreams.” Ace sighed, “What was your nightmare about?”

“I dreamed that I was at my childhood home.” he started, “But it was on fire. I was being chased by creatures made of fire and ash, and I knew with that certainty that only comes with dreams that they were the monstrous remains of my dead friends and family. They chased me through the burning husk of my house, but the hallways were strange, and none of the doorways led where they were supposed to. Then one of the creatures reached me, and I woke up just before it plunged its hand through my chest.”

“You can  _ die _ in a dream?” Ace demanded, unable to imagine how that could be safe, how anyone could remain sane when they might experience death every night, but Shun waved away his concerns.

“Not completely.” he assured him, “Your brain, despite being the one who conjured the scenario, recognizes that you think you’re in danger and wakes you up before you can die. It’s a jolting awakening though, never fun to just snap to awareness suddenly.”

“I can imagine.” he shuddered, “I don’t know if I could handle closing my eyes every night not knowing if I would open them to something pleasant or awful.”

“You get used to it.” Shun patted his shoulder, “Like vestals are used to Bakugan, despite humans being terrified of them at first.”

“Now that I can imagine.” Ace chuckled, “Anything else I should know about sleep? Do you guys emit psychic waves or randomly scream?”

“Nothing crazy. Well, actually, I do suffer from sleep paralysis.”

“Sleep  _ what _ ?”

“Okay, so”, Shun laughed, “when a human sleeps, the mind paralyzes the body in order to prevent us from acting out our dreams in the waking world-“

“No way.”

“-but sometimes a person will wake up, and the mind doesn’t get the memo and keeps them paralyzed until it realizes they’re awake.”

“That sounds  _ terrifying _ !” Ace exclaimed, and Shun nodded.

“It is.” he said, “Dan and Marucho are lucky. They don’t have to deal with it.”

“But you do?”

“Yeah.” he sighed, “I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve suffered from sleep paralysis since I was a kid.”

“Is there no cure?” Ace asked, honestly a little worried. Shun smiled at him, as if sensing his worry.

“Unfortunately no. But it’s okay. At the very least, my sleep paralysis demon doesn’t frighten me as much as it used to.”

“Sleep… paralysis… what?”

“Okay.” Shun laughed again, and Ace got the impression this entire exchange was novel for him, “So when you wake up paralyzed, the brain doesn’t know you’re awake. So it tends to project remnants of your dreams onto the waking world you see. It usually manifests in the sight of a monster at the foot of your bed, or a demon sitting on your chest.”

“What the  _ fuck _ ?”

“Yeah.” he shrugged, “Everyone tends to see different things when paralyzed. The demon I see the most is a pale and creepy schoolgirl covered in blood and grinning at me, usually either crouching at the foot of my bed or crawling on the ceiling above me. I think it’s a ghost from a movie I saw when I was a kid that stuck with me.” Ace stared at him with horror and a grudging respect, wondering how he could talk so calmly about something that sounded like absolute terror, and to deal with that regularly, never sure when it would happen. Shun glanced at him, and then grinned again.

“You think that’s bad?” he asked, “Dan sleepwalks.”

“He what?” Ace groaned, “Stars, what is that? It sounds creepy.”

“It is creepy.” Shun agreed, “Sometimes his mind fails to paralyze him, so he walks around dead asleep acting out his dreams.” Ace choked a little.

“ _ What _ ?”

“It’s a common ailment. I remember I first learned about it when we were teenagers.” Shun laughed a little at the expression of horror on his face, “I was staying the night at his house, and around four am I heard noise from the kitchen. When I went to investigate, I found Dan making himself a very uncoordinated bowl of cereal. When I asked him what he was doing, he didn’t respond. Didn’t even acknowledge I was there. Then I looked at his face, and saw that he was completely asleep, eyes closed and everything. Freaked me right out.”

“I can imagine.” Ace said faintly, imagining Dan walking around unresponsive and unseeing and shuddering at the image, “Does that happen often?”

“Mostly when he’s stressed.” he replied, and Ace huffed.

“Is this something we should be watching out for? We’re dealing with some stressful stuff with the Resistance.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shun said, apparently unconcerned, “I usually wake up when he does. But in case it happens when Marucho or I aren’t around, the best thing to do when encountering a sleepwalker is to-“

“Wake him up?” Ace guessed, but Shun shook his head.

“You could, but that’s jarring to the sleepwalker, and an excellent way to get punched. The best thing to do is to carefully guide him back to bed without waking him.”

“I’m guessing you’re used to that?” Ace cocked an eyebrow as he processed the information, and Shun nodded.

“Yeah. He likes to joke that it’s payment for him waking up one night to find me paralyzed and staring in wide-eyed terror at a shadowy part of my room. That was his first experience with my sleep paralysis, he says it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.” Ace tried to imagine it, waking up to find Mira or Baron laying frozen, clearly terrified but not responding to him at all, staring petrified at something he couldn’t see. 

“I don’t think I like sleep.” he admitted quietly, but Shun didn’t seem offended.

“Sleep itself is good.” he said, “Dreams and brain waves are where it gets complicated.”

“What happens if you don’t sleep?” Ace ventured to ask.

“We can generally go a night or two without sleep.” he shrugged, “But cognition does suffer. The longer we go without sleep, the more foggy and unfocused we become. Our ability to perform complex tasks deteriorates, we struggle with simple concepts, we start drifting off into microsleeps at dangerous times. If you go long enough, like three or four days, you’ll start to hallucinate. Eventually, the mind gets tired of it and forced us to sleep. This is called a crash, and it’ll make you sleep like the dead for a long time.”

“See, at least vestals can generally keep control of their own bodies.” Ace huffed, “You guys just seem to be slaves to your brain’s whims.”

“You are too, just in different ways, I’m sure.” Shun said idly, “It only seems frightening to you because it’s new and unheard of.”

“I guess.”

“Well, either way, I’m always happy to answer questions.” Shun smiled at him, “But maybe tomorrow. It’s getting late, and I’m tired.”

“Time to sleep?” Ace asked, and Shun nodded.

“Yeah.” he stood, stretching his back and closing the file he’d abandoned in favor of talking to Ace, “Dan and Marucho made a little blanket nest in one of the living area couches since you guys don’t have need of beds. It’s pretty comfortable, surprisingly, you’re welcome to it if you ever need to relax.”

“Thanks.” Ace said, sighing and standing to go attend to his own affairs, “Um… sleep good?” Shun chuckled slightly at that, his strange eyes reflecting none of the moonlight.

“Good night, Ace.” he smiled, and then he was gone, leaving Ace alone with his thoughts.

Humans were  _ weird _ , was his ultimate conclusion, and Ace wondered if he’d ever stop learning unsettling things about them. That night, he slipped quietly into the living area to observe the sleep in person. Dan, Shun, and Marucho were all curled up together in an admittedly cozy-looking blanket nest on the small couch, eyes closed and breathing deep and even. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to seeing his friends in this unnerving state of incapacity, like androids powered down, and his mind wandered against his will to all the potential dangers that could befall them while they laid vulnerable, lost in either dreams or oblivion.

Well. If he put a few extra security measures on the door to this room, no one would call him out on it. 


End file.
